Booming ATL neighborhoods on mission to build bridge, playground

About three years ago, Boulevard Heights resident Bobbie Spiller decided to put on her philanthropy hat and volunteer for a street-by-street cleanup of the neighborhood next door, Chosewood Park.

Spiller made friends that day, walked for about three miles picking up trash, and had a lightbulb moment alongside other volunteers: From where they stood, in order to get to Chosewood Park’s actually park—a 6-acre, wooded greenspace with a baseball field and tennis and basketball courts—it would require another mile of walking, well out of the way, though the park was within sight.

Spiller, a Keller Knapp Realty real estate consultant, joined the nonprofit Friends of Chosewood Park board, where the idea for a grassroots-funded bridge and other community-boosting amenities began to bounce.

“[The greenspace] is only accessible from the west side of the neighborhood,” says Spiller. “With the new bridge and walking trails, the north, east, and south side of the neighborhood will have much needed access to the park.”

Three years later, the organization has raised more than $3 million from fundraising events, developer donations, city funding, and recent grants from the likes of Park Pride and the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation. That includes $2.5 million for what they’re calling the Unity Bridge project, a Pond & Company-designed concept “the neighborhood loves but needs more funding for,” says Spiller.

Chosewood Park, like Boulevard Heights and other neighborhoods south of Grant Park, is being rapidly reshaped by development, with all sections of the BeltLine’s adjacent Southside Trail expected to be under construction next year.

According to Friends of Chosewood Park, the influx of development has created stormwater issues, with runoff now flowing directly into the…